Atonement
by runaway ballista
Summary: BTC; Genma can't help but feel that atonement rituals should be a private thing. Set several months after "Even". Implied GenYuu.
1. Part I

Implied Genma/Yuugao, set preseries, part one of two. Third in the Genma/Yuugao series, set at the end of the year in which "Even" takes place. Please enjoy.

**Atonement**

**Part I**

Genma liked parties well enough, but bounenkai he tended to stay away from. Not that he wasn't all about getting drunk with his comrades and friends on any given night, but a night to forget the sorrows and troubles of the past year – that seemed to be something that one should do on his own. Genma had a ritual for that, something pretty unofficial – he'd stand at the edge of the river and toss stale bread and crumbled senbei into it, counting his sins one by one with a flick of his wrist and the swig of shochu that accompanied each one. _One for the civilian casualty in that document retrieval mission_, he'd think as he watched a duck snap up a few crumbs while the rest melted into the water; _One for the genin that got caught in that explosion tag._ Eventually, he'd get so completely shitfaced, he'd have to wait till Raidou came out to the river and dragged his sorry ass back to his apartment so he could puke up all of the stale bread – all of the sins – he didn't eat, and all of the atonement alcohol he did.

But this year, Aoba had somehow managed to convince him that going to the bounenkai was a good idea. The convincing had happened on a mission – when most of Aoba's successful convincing was done – during a stakeout that had lasted so long that by the tail end of it, Genma had had so much of Aoba's incessant chatter that he'd have agreed to anything to get the man to shut up. By the time Genma had realized exactly what he had agreed to, it was too late to back down, and Genma was, if nothing else, a man of his word.

Ibiki was hosting the bounenkai – as he did every year, much to the confusion of the general population. Ibiki was such a nonsocial creature that it was hard to imagine he'd voluntarily host a party which most of the village's chuunin, tokujou, and jounin would be attending, and he seemed to rarely make an appearance himself. The only people who could swear to seeing him were generally drunk at the time. This Genma found unsurprising.

The large house was already crowded with people chattering and murmuring over drinks by the time Aoba dragged Genma there. To Genma's mild surprise, Raidou was standing on the front porch, leaning against the outside wall with a beer in his hand. The two of them exchanged a mutual cocking of eyebrows, but Genma beat Raidou to the obvious question.

"You come to these things?"

Raidou rolled his eyes and snorted as he bumped his fist against Genma's in a friendly greeting. "I need something to do every year while I wait for you to get shitfaced on the riverside. Though I see your plans have changed, this year." He gave Genma a slightly suspicious look. "I thought you didn't like bounenkai."

"I don't, generally speaking," Genma said, tossing his head in Aoba's direction, though the lanky tokujou had already started wandering off into the party. "But the Wondermouth here managed to convince me to come."

"Aha." It was a given that Raidou understood exactly how Aoba's convincing worked on missions; he'd been victim to it more than once. The two of them were pretty convinced that Aoba never quite knew exactly what he was doing, of course. Raidou looked fairly amused, and offered his beer to Genma, who declined with a shake of his head.

"I'll get my own, thanks." Genma turned his gaze to the open door, peering inside, where he presumed the alcohol to be. "Shit, man, everyone and their mother really does show up to this thing."

"Wouldn't be so sure about their mothers, given some of the shit that goes on every year. Did you ever hear about the karaoke strip poker incident?" Raidou shuddered and took a sip of his beer. "I swear, I never want to see that much of Aoba ever again. Or Iwashi. Or – you know what? Any of them."

Genma cackled aloud, and Raidou grunted in mild displeasure. "Shut up and go get your beer, Shiranui. I'm not allowed to get more drunk than you, tonight."

Genma cocked the senbon in his mouth at Raidou in a parody of a smirk as he carried himself through the door. Almost as soon as he'd crossed the threshold, he found he had to start squeezing by people – the place really _was_ crowded. It took him several minutes and a few muttered questions to find where, exactly, the alcohol was being kept, and the search led him even deeper into the house. There was a crowd of people surrounding the icebox, and it took Genma a few moments to make his way close enough to grab a beer – two, on second thought; Raidou could probably use a second, despite his insistence on remaining relatively sober.

The condensation on the bottles chilled his hands as he turned, eyes searching for the exit again so he could find Raidou. The house was full of people – some he recognized, some he didn't, and some he –

His gaze jerked back to the smudge of color that had caught his eye. He recognized what he could see of the sheet of plum-colored hair and painted china face faster than he was ready to admit. He hadn't seen her for months – not since he'd visited her in the hospital after that rescue mission – but he still knew that face anywhere.

She was standing by the wall, talking to some kid – he must have been older than he looked, but he was so sickly and emaciated it was hard to tell. Her scarlet lips were moving slowly and deliberately, just like the way Genma remembered that she spoke, but she was smiling more than he could ever recall. It didn't seem right. Her eyes, though, were the same as ever. Genma abandoned the idea of finding the front porch right away – Raidou could wait a little longer for his other beer. They had the whole night, after all.

It was so much easier to move toward Yuugao than it was to scramble for the door. She wasn't all that far away, even if the distance was interspersed with moving, living bodies. Genma saw Yuugao say something to the kid as he covered his mouth, saw her place her hand lightly on his arm before he moved away. As Genma drew closer and got a better look, he realized the kid was probably older than Yuugao was. She was really only a girl herself. Genma remembered how small she'd looked on the hospital bed.

It was odd to see her in something other than a hospital gown or her ANBU uniform. She was dressed modestly, in a long-sleeved shirt with a high neck well-suited to the cold. Pants, Genma noticed, not a skirt. ANBU were always the pragmatic, functional types, while their minds were still largely intact.

As expected of a top-notch agent, she noticed his approaching presence before he'd said a word. She turned to face him as he stepped into place beside her against the wall, her features washed lightly with surprise.

"I know you," Genma said, smirking wryly around the senbon. He noticed the half-empty bottle in her hands. It was odd – he'd never imagined her to be the type to drink. She was so serious – so young.

_Remember me?_

Yuugao smiled slightly, but it wasn't the full smile Genma had once had the chance to see. "No you don't, Genma-san," she said, and though she seemed to be joking in that somber way of hers, Genma reeled slightly, as if he'd been struck.

_Why did you come here?_

"I didn't know you came to Ibiki-senpai's bounenkai."

"I don't, generally speaking." Genma was deliberately off-handed, sliding one of the cold beers into his pocket so that he could crack open the other. "I was coerced into it, this year. Though I have to say, I'm equally surprised at seeing you here. Didn't know you fancied a busy, crowded kind of thing like this."

"I never said I do." Yuugao took a sip from the bottle in her hand. Genma noticed the delicate way her lips touched the glass – everything about her was so deceptively fragile. "I suppose I can say I was coerced, as well. A friend asked me to come."

The symmetry of circumstance was so absurd to Genma that he wanted to laugh, but he refrained. "That sickly thing you were talking to just now?" he asked, raising his bottle to her in a gesture so slight it was hard to swear it had been there at all. The beer was fresh and crisp and absolutely shitty, and Genma would have expected no less.

Yuugao laughed, so quietly that Genma could only identify it by her movements. "Hayate-san? No, not him."

"So who is he, then?" Genma couldn't help but note how odd it was to see her so whole and normal, especially next to the shinobi she'd been speaking to.

"A colleague." Genma couldn't tell if she was being evasive on purpose, or if her way of speaking merely made it seem that way. "He is an excellent swordsman. I hope to learn from him."

Genma studied her, this time with a much more critical and deliberate eye. In the few times they'd ever spoken, he'd gotten the feeling that there was always something she was deliberately not saying. He wasn't sure if it was merely force of habit, or if she was guarded, somehow. The thought only made her seem all the more delicate. "So you can better save sorry old shinobi from their untimely demise?" he said, smirking in an entirely self-deprecating manner. He'd expected her to be amused by it, but she seemed to shy away from it instead.

"We are all forever pupils at the hand of experience," she recited, all too seriously, and this time Genma really couldn't help but laugh. It was short-lived; he couldn't tell if she was offended by it or not. "So if you don't usually come to parties like this, Genma-san, what do you do this time of year?"

He shrugged, dismissively, though he thought, briefly, how odd it was that she so frequently addressed him by name – he wasn't sure he'd ever so much as spoken hers. "Much the same as I'm doing now, but I do all the drinking by myself," he said glibly. It was an oversimplification – almost a lie – and he was almost certain she knew it. "I've got a place I go to."

"Every year?"

He almost felt uncomfortable, the way she asked. It was strange – she was only a girl. "Every year."

What could have been some sort of amused interested touched Yuugao's face, delicately so, and Genma watched her as she took another sip of her beer. He wondered if she even enjoyed the taste of that stuff. "You're a man of ritual, Genma-san. It's not hard to see. Why would you abandon such an important ritual in favor of a party like this? You don't like it."

Genma wanted to be offended at the way she so authoritatively made those statements – as if she knew them to be fact. The worst part was that she was right on just about every point. He gave her an almost tight-lipped smile, raising his beer to his mouth. "I'm also a man of my word," he said, leaning back against the wall, "and I did give my word to a friend I'd be here."

Yuugao smiled, slightly, and Genma thought he finally might be offended. A prelude to speech hung in the air in front of her lips, light and buzzing, but Genma spoke before she could bite it out of the air.

"So if this isn't the sort of thing you usually do this time of year," he said, swirling the beer in his bottle slightly, as one usually does with fine wine in a crystal glass, "then what do you do?"

"Missions, usually." Her tone was even, but Genma was almost certain she was deliberately evading the question. _Liar_, he thought to himself, even if that was the wrong word and he knew it.

"That's not what I meant," he said, even though he was quite sure she already knew that. She only smiled at him, still, and inclined her head slightly toward him. Her violet hair shifted and fell in waves with the motion.

"The beer in your pocket is getting warm, Genma-san," she told him, though her eyes never left his face. "You should bring it to your friend soon."

Once again, Genma felt as if he'd been slapped. He flinched, involuntarily, and stepped back with the motion, masking it. Her words were nothing but that – words – but sometimes, when she spoke, they held such power that he could do nothing but acknowledge them in such a way. Or rather, he chose to acknowledge them – he lent them power as much as she did. Bowing stiffly, his hair falling over his face for a brief moment, he drew back. "It was a pleasure entertaining you, Yuugao-san," he said, speaking her name for the first time. The honorific seemed mocking. His eyes never left her face.

She said nothing more. Her figure melted into the crowd as Genma sidled away, drawing the beer from his pocket. The condensation had made it cool and slippery, and it slid in his grasp, as if trying to wriggle free. He clamped his fingers around it more tightly, and headed back for the front door.

Raidou was, predictably, still standing there, though the bottle he'd held before was empty and now resting on the porch against the outside wall. He raised his head as Genma stepped out onto the porch, holding two beers. The evening December chill was biting, but somehow Genma felt no colder.

"Hey." Raidou nodded at him, removing one large hand from his pocket to accept the bottles held out to him. "Took you an awful long time to pick up a few beers. Did you have a fight with the cooler or something?"

"I ran into an acquaintance," Genma said, his tone even and neutral. Raidou cocked an eyebrow. "No one you know," Genma added, but Raidou looked even more intrigued now.

"Wrong answer, Genma. Now I'm _curious_." The creeping half-smirk looked a little out of place on Raidou's heavily scarred face. Genma grunted into his beer, refusing to indulge his best friend at his own expense.

"I think I'm heading out," he said, a bit abruptly, after draining half of what was left in the bottle. He was in no mood to dance with words. He held the beer out in Raidou's direction, and when his comrade didn't take it, he set it down neatly on the windowsill. From the corner of his eye, he watched the expression on Raidou's face shift into something more serious.

"You just got here. Why the hell are you taking off so soon?"

Genma gave a noncommittal shrug. "Bounenkai aren't my thing. If I want to get shitfaced, I can do it not surrounded by people trying to absolve themselves of their sins." It was such a private thing – why would anyone want to do it with tens of other people who were doing the very same thing?

He knew the answer, but he didn't care for it.

Raidou's face was somewhere between displeased and concerned. "I'll go with you," he offered, nodding at Genma. Genma just shook his head, waving his hand.

"You actually like these things. You come every year, don't you? Stick around with Yamashiro. Keep him relatively out of trouble. I'm just going to go home." It wasn't a complete lie – Genma's shochu was in his apartment. Raidou's expression was now tinged slightly with what looked like it could be distress, and he leaned against the outside wall of the house with a quiet huff.

"I'll come looking for you later," he said. His voice had an incongruous warning tone to it. Genma just shoved his hands into his pockets and cocked his senbon upward with a smirk, shaking his head as he carried himself away from Ibiki's bustling home. He could have told Raidou not to bother, but he was always glad for the company at the end of the night, and suggesting anything else would have been a lie on more than one level. The wind nipped at his nose threateningly, but Genma made no move to pick up his pace. There was no need to hurry, tonight.


	2. Part II

**Atonement**

**Part II**

This time of year, the river was unforgivingly cold. This Genma knew to be a fact. He'd never set foot in the river after October, but he didn't need to feel the water to know. It glistened sharply under the moonlight, small, thin shards of ice floating downstream with the current. It looked the same every year. Genma found an alien comfort in it.

In his right hand, he kept his fingers tightly closed around the neck of the bottle of shochu; in his left, he held a bag of stale senbei in varying flavors. The majority of them were a completely untouched collection of squid-flavored senbei he'd received as a souvenir from one of his elders. Genma couldn't stand squid-flavored anything, but he couldn't very well throw them out. They made wonderful duck bait on the one night a year he fed the river all of his demons.

Genma started off standing. He always did. But as the night wore on and the shochu left the bottle, he found it increasingly difficult to get his feet to agree with the ground beneath him. Eventually he was on his ass, the frost on the grass melting underneath him into the seat of his pants. He threw the stale senbei into the river, watching them break up as the icy water soaked into them. _One for the information I lied about having failed to retrieve because Tobitake killed one too many civilians._ Another one joined the uneven line of soggy senbei sliding and sinking down the river. _One for the civilian I couldn't save from that tag blast._ The line kept getting longer and longer as Genma counted his sins, each one accompanied with a fiery swig of shochu. _One for each of those ANBU we didn't get there in time to save_.

There was a rustle in the frosted grass behind him, and he jerked suddenly, unevenly – the alcohol hadn't dulled his senses any, but it had fucked with his ability to move properly in response to his automatic shinobi alerts. He steadied his arm before he'd managed to spill any of the alcohol, twisting his body around to identify the source of the sudden, unexpected disturbance.

He almost couldn't see her at first. She was so dark and cold-looking herself that she blended in too well with the night, even out of uniform. A biting breeze swept through the air as she approached him, brushing her hair back from her cold white face, but she didn't seem to flinch. The only warmth that seemed to be left in her was in the color of lips.

Genma was sure there was something to say, but his clumsy, groping mind couldn't find it. He simply watched, slack-jawed, drunk, and interrupted, as she dropped to one knee beside him – just behind him.

"What are you doing here?" The edges of the words were sharpened by the alcohol; Genma bore Yuugao little ill will, but she had imposed on what was, to him, a private thing. "What, did you come here to drink away all your sins, too?"

Yuugao merely shook her head. Genma couldn't help but notice that the lack of uniform did nothing to erase the distinctive grace that came with being in ANBU. The way she rested her weight, with one knee on the ground, was so light and delicate that it looked as though the grass might claim her at any moment. He wanted to ask how she'd found him – why – but he couldn't navigate the words around the thick slush in his mouth. Instead, he just turned back to the river, crushing a senbei in his hand. The crumbs never made it to the water, falling from his palm to blend in with the dirt and grass and sand.

Yuugao, Genma had noticed, had never been one much given to words; she was a woman of silent, swift action. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to him that she didn't speak, merely eased herself down into a kneeling position at the riverbank beside Genma. Her white hands were clasped neatly in her lap, making no move to reach for the absolution Genma was so desperately feeding upon. Genma had never found himself so discomfited in silence.

Finally, she moved – silently, but not as much as Genma would have thought; he was almost surprised to hear the soft rustle of her clothes and the crinkle of the grass beneath her as she leaned forward. She dipped her bare hand into the river, where some bits of Genma's senbei still floated tentatively. When she withdrew her hand, a soggy piece of senbei was stuck to one of her fingers. Watching her, Genma was suddenly seized with an irrational fear that she had interrupted this ritual, all but destroyed it, merely by shifting that one small piece out of place. His drink-clouded mind spun in purely internal panic that refused to surface on his face; his eyes were fixed rigidly on her, watching his absolution hang in the balance of one girl.

Yuugao seemed to study the soggy piece of cracker on her finger for a moment before she leaned forward and dipped her hand back into the river. When she drew it out, it came away clean; the missing piece had been restored. Genma was surprised with how much relief that simple action had granted him; letting the feeling flood coldly into his stomach, he settled back and watched as the senbei continued to travel down the river, a little less sluggishly now thanks to Yuugao's hand. The whole thing, Genma decided, was eerie.

"Does it really help?" she asked, her voice unexpectedly soft and subdued.

"Yeah," Genma answered, "sometimes." There were some stains that simple atonement couldn't erase, but every shinobi had those. They sat in silence for a short while. There was nothing to be said, now.

Moving in eerie silence, Yuugao leaned forward slightly. Her fingers glided over the grass and dirt, where the senbei crumbs lay, brushing them into the water. Genma watched her in sluggish bemusement. His drink-clouded mind could not fathom her actions.

The words bubbled up from his throat, now, slowly and sparsely. "So what _do_ you do?" Despite the lack of verbal context, it seemed his meaning was well-understood. Yuugao's face turned away from him as her hand drew back, her profile edged in moonlight. In a flash of sobriety, Genma could only think the image was painfully striking.

She shook her head then, slowly, her hair – black under the night sky – shifting and sliding like silk. Genma sat back on his heels, fingering the top of the bottle of shochu in mild vexation. That was no answer.

"Don't fuck around." Genma hurled another senbei into the river; there seemed to be a degree of malice in the force of the action. "You don't go to bounenkai. You don't do this stupid shit like I do. What do you do to start yourself over? What do you do to rid yourself of all the filth that accumulates?" He couldn't accept the idea that she would do nothing – just about everyone in this village did something to make themselves clean again. She was ANBU – she had to. She couldn't have been that cold – not with a face like that. She was only a girl. "What do you do at the end of the year to make it all _right _again?"

It looked like, for a moment, Yuugao was smiling that tragic smile, but it was just as soon gone, and Genma wanted to believe it was just a trick of the light on his hazy vision. "At the end of the year?" she said, and her voice was like the wind on the grass, "I do nothing."

Genma took a spiteful drink, resenting her suddenly. "Don't fuck around," he said again. His hand dove back into the bag of senbei, but they were all but gone.

"There are too many things to get rid of all at once." The quality of her voice had changed. She didn't sound quite like the girl he'd seen in the hospital – less of a girl, now. Still serious, but so much less young for the world. "An ANBU carries too many sins to drop them all into the water at once. We must atone for them as they are committed, one by one."

The drink went down bitter and burning in Genma's throat. The bottle was so much lighter, now. Yuugao folded her hands – those deceptively delicate white hands – over her lap. "I envy you, Genma-san. The weight of your sins would never dam up the river."

Genma felt insulted for a fleeting moment, watching her with lidded eyes as she rose to her feet. She was too young – far too young. But it was still a comfort to know that there was still something on the inside.

The last two senbei dropped into the water with the lightest of sounds. Genma leaned back on his elbows with a grunt, watching them float unevenly down the river together, side by side. The shochu wasn't all gone, but that just meant he'd save it for later. His eyes rolled lazily up to Yuugao, who was still standing just behind him.

She didn't carry the weight of a collection with her; that was why she appeared to float so lightly, so tentatively, why she looked like nothing more than a girl. But Genma looked closer, and he could see the stains that had been left – left by each and every one of them. She carried the residual weight, still, but so deeply inside of her.

That white hand came into his blurred vision. His eyes shifted and refocused, to see that Yuugao was holding her hand out to him. She smiled, but it never reached her mouth. "You've thrown away all that you needed to, Genma-san. Why don't I help you home?"

That was what Raidou was usually for, though, and for a moment it seemed to all be horribly out of place – but Genma couldn't bring himself to refuse her, finding his hand on hers without thinking much of it. He staggered to his feet with the pull of her weight, swaying slightly as the alcohol simply defied gravity and rushed to his head. He felt a steadying arm around his shoulders, thin and cool.

They moved through the village soundlessly, save for the slosh and swish of the alcohol left in Genma's bottle. It was a blur to his unfocused eyes, nothing that needed paying attention to, and for all that she was so much smaller than him, she never faltered. Genma wasn't sure when they reached his place, or when he'd even told her where he lived – had he? – but she had brought him to his door just the same, but without the usual muttered chiding that Raidou usually provided. She had done her duty, silently and swiftly – like she did everything.

She slid away from him like liquid grace, and Genma watched her hazily as he fumbled for his keys. "You must be a beautiful sight in action," he said – he hadn't meant to say it, but the words had fallen from his mouth loosely, a distant observation. She smiled again, slightly – a real smile, this time? – and stepped back, away from him.

"I'm sure you'd like to see that sometime, Genma-san," she intoned, and bowed her head to him. "I wish you a good new year, Genma-san. May you live to see the next."

And then she was gone. Genma had only the time to think that it wasn't even the new year yet before he was alone on his front step, the keys finally between his fingers. He stared distantly at the place where she'd been for a moment before he scraped the key against the doorknob in a sorry attempt to unlock it.

"May you live to see the next," Genma echoed as he shuffled into his home, and he found that he meant it.


End file.
